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New Yorkers Use 'Subway Therapy' Post-Its to React to Tuesday's Election

By Danielle Tcholakian | November 11, 2016 10:14am | Updated on November 14, 2016 8:51am
 New Yorkers scrawled messages on Post-Its in the 14th Street subway passageway after Tuesday's election.
New Yorkers scrawled messages on Post-Its in the 14th Street subway passageway after Tuesday's election.
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DNAinfo/Danielle Tcholakian

GREENWICH VILLAGE — New Yorkers wrote thousands of messages on Post-It notes expressing their hopes and fears about the outcome of Tuesday's presidential election that papered the underground walkway along 14th Street between 6th and 7th avenues.

The Post-Its were put up in the tunnel, which serves as a path between the F, M, 1, 2, 3 and L trains, by amateur "subway therapist" Levee Chavez.

Chavez has been providing "subway therapy" for some time, according to his website, setting up a table and chairs and welcoming people to sit down and unload their problems to him.

He wrote on his website that he had the idea to put up the Post-Its after Tuesday's election.

"The last couple days have been stressful and I figured it would be good to not just be present, but provide people with an opportunity to engage in a small and easy way," he wrote.

According to Chavez's count, some 2,000 Post-Its were filled out on Wednesday, with messages of hope and sorrow.

"I feel like love lost. I want to make it win again. How do we do this?" read one Post-It photographed on Chavez's website.

"I woke up today on one of the worst days of my life — all of my identities feel attacked. But I went to work as a teacher and my students give me hope — we will get through," read another.

By midday Thursday, the Post-Its were gone.

An MTA spokesman said they had been removed by Chavez. Chavez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But a group of women were gathered in the tunnel where the messages had been, and were affixing new Post-Its to the wall.

"We came to see it, and now we're upset that it's taken down," said Louiza Karim, 36, who lives in Astoria.

"We need some healing," added her friend, DUMBO resident Kristin Ferris, 45.

DUMBO resident Kristin Ferris, left, and Louiza Karim, right, replenished the "subway therapy" Post-Its on Thursday after they had been removed. (DNAinfo/Danielle Tcholakian)

As the pair stood by, another woman came and took out a pen, scrawling a message on one of the notes they had just put up.

"Make America compassionate again!" she wrote in all capital letters, underlining "compassionate" twice.